Sometimes serious. Sometimes humorous. Always unpredictable. By Dan Pimentel - Welcome to the Airplanista Aviation Blog, where I take a lighthearted look at general and business aviation, the airlines, and the incredible and generous community of aviators called #Avgeeks...they are my aviation family. I am currently available for magazine and corporate writing assignments - Email me here.

4:42 PM

We go live now via satellite to Vancouver, where it is raining airplanes...

This is being tossed around the wires today, and shows how much of a "pack mentality" the mainstream media has about airplane crashes:

Police and ambulance vehicles rushed to the scene of a reported plane crash in the Vancouver, British Columbia suburb of Surrey last Sunday. According to the Vancouver Sun, a woman and her young son called 911 after they saw a "Cessna" go down in a field next to one of Surrey's busiest streets.

From there, a case of mistaken identity took on a life of its own. Media outlets monitoring the police and ambulance radio channels began broadcasting bulletins about the crash. "We sent all our cars down there thinking there was a small plane that had crashed but after going there we determined it was a radio-controlled model Cessna," said Cpl. Steven Han of the Surrey Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

But even while the cops were busy broadcasting that the "downed" airplane as a TOY, and that there were NO PEOPLE ON BOARD, the media pounced on the scene, including still cameramen as well as satellite trucks, who frantically began to set up in the vicinity.

Reporters asked questions, cameras rolled. One witness posted in another blog that the scene was a riot, with the media scampering everywhere looking for blood and broken airplanes, while the RCMP (on foot, not horseback) stood by chuckling.

Oh, am I glad to have gotten my MSM ya-yas out years ago...because I'd go crazy being part of that pack today.